Ballots from 2000 election still in state archive

TALLAHASSEE -- Florida's Secretary of State says it doesn't make sense to continue taking up state archive space with ballots from the 2000 presidential election.

Secretary of State Kurt Browning tells The Miami Herald he'd like to free up space in the archive that holds the ballots more than 4,000 cubic feet of them. Browning told the paper in an article published Sunday that he wants to seriously consider moving them out sometime after the 2008 elections.

"What purpose do they serve?" said Browning, who as Secretary of State oversees the Division of Elections. "I have a hard time giving away valuable space for more than 5,000 boxes."

Browning said "political reasons" keep him from doing anything with the ballots right now, adding that it wouldn't look good if a "Republican secretary of state is doing away with ballots that elected a Republican president."

Browning, who was appointed by Gov. Charlie Crist in 2006, said the ballots could never be used to recreate yet another recount. Browning says the ballots have been handled so many times that any loose chads may have finally fallen out. He said it's only a matter of time before the paper used to make the ballots will begin to deteriorate.

Though election ballots are normally destroyed after 22 months, state officials decided they should hold onto the more than six million votes cast in the historic election between Al Gore and George W. Bush that Bush ultimately won by just 537 votes. In May 2003, the state gathered up boxes of ballots from 65 of the 67 counties and put them in the state archives in Tallahassee. Ballots from two other counties had already been destroyed.

The Miami Herald talked to Browning about the ballots in the wake of the recent HBO movie about the 2000 election, "Recount." In the final seconds of the movie, row after row of election ballots are shown sitting inside a gigantic warehouse.